The ancient ancestors of the Am Staffs are the mastiff type dogs who appear in many

breed histories. Although much of this information is lost in antiquity, we know from

early art of the large heavy -headed strong dogs who were used throughout history for

their strength and guarding abilities. This early group of dogs has left genetic material

for all the bulldog breeds and mastiff type dogs of today.

In earlier days in England, mastiff types were bred down to smaller size and some

became bulldogs (actually bulldogs were named because they were used to hold on

to bulls or cattle/oxen). Originally the dogs were butchers’ dogs or farmers’ dogs that

helped move cattle around and held them still for their owners. They kept them still

literally by holding on to them, usually by the nose. It became customary entertainment

in England to watch as the butcher’s dog caught the bull and held it while the butcher

killed it. For some reason the common folk began to think that meat that had been

harried by the dog before dying was tastier than meat that had died peacefully. There

was for a time, an English law enacted by the Queen that reportedly, forbad other

butchers from killing their stock on the same day her royal butchers did, in order that

the commoners would watch her dogs work.

Eventually this sport gave way to some other type of meat tenderiser and the dogs

were used on other “game”. One of these uses was rat killing. The English seem to

have had lots of rats and folks amused themselves by watching dogs put into “pits”

(arenas) with hundreds of rats. Of course betting was done on how many could be

dispatched how fast. This called for a smaller, faster dog so some of the now extinct

English terriers were crossed with the bulldog. These early bulldogs and now bulland-

terriers were used to fight bears, stags, badgers and each other. Dogs were more

easily come by than bears, which were probably getting kind of scarce in England,

and dogs were probably easier to keep for a commoner than expensive cattle.

The bull-and-terrier evolved into three of our modern breeds, the Staffordshire Bull

Terrier, the Bull Terrier, and the American Staffordshire Terrier.

The early bull-and-terriers came to America with immigrants from England and Ireland.

Here some grew bigger and taller in response to their duties in a new and wider

country. Some stayed in cities and were kept by the same type of “sporting” owner as

in England and Ireland. These were fought against each other around the pubs of

New York, Chicago, and Boston (and other cities of course). A product of some of

these dogs is the very American breed of Boston Bulldog, or Boston Terrier, as it is

known. These used to be 35-40 lb dogs, and were very similar to the early Am Staff

(or Pit Bull, Bulldog, American Bulldog, Bull-and-Terrier, Yankee Terrier, some of the

names these dogs were known under then), except for the shorter bulldog face and

screw tail.

The larger bull-and-terrier was still a farm dog and stockman’s dog. He followed the

wagons west with the settlers and helped work stock and guard the homestead. He

was a general-purpose homestead dog, much as the dog described in the book and

in the old movie, The Yearling, and although not as fleet or strong of nose as the

hounds, he was still the “catch” dog who dispatched the animal when it turned at

bay.

By the late 1800s a fighting dog registry was started in America to keep track of the

prized pedigrees and publish the rules for dog fighting organisations in that country.

The United Kennel Club registered the dogs as American Pit Bull Terriers. Sometimes

this was written as American (Pit) Bull, or American Bull Terrier. Mostly they were

known as Bulldogs, or Pit Bulls.

Although it is this dog’s fighting background that is mostly remembered, only a relatively

small number of the dogs were fought. Most of them went on being farmers’ and

general-purpose countrymens’ dogs and still worked stock, penning, guarding and

helping, just as they had done in their earliest days.

In the early 1930s a group of fanciers petitioned the American Kennel Club to accept

their dogs into the registry. These dogs were already registered with the United Kennel

Club, but their owners had no interest in dog fighting. They wanted to promote their

breed as family dogs and show dogs. They formed a national breed club and wrote a

standard for the breed. Much agonizing was done over the proper name for the breed

as the American Kennel Club was not inclined to register them with the same name

as the United Kennel Club. Finally, in 1936, they were accepted with the name

Staffordshire Terrier. This was just a year after the English bull-and-terriers under the

name of Staffordshire Bull Terriers were recognised with the Kennel Club of England.

The standards of both the English and American breeds were written similarly, and

even contained some identical phrases. The authors of both kept in touch with each

other working toward their common goal of acceptance by their kennel clubs. At that

time the dogs described were more similar in size and structure than the breeds

appear today.

In the early 1970s the name of Staffordshire Terrier was changed to American

Staffordshire Terrier when the American Kennel Club recognised the Staffordshire

Bull Terrier breed.